Where do broken hearts go? The museum?

While the answer to the song “Where Do Broken Hearts Go?” of the late singer Whitney Houston  remains elusive to many, an ex-couple in Croatia has figured out what they would do with their collective past: put up a showcase of relationship mementos that silently spoke of heartbreak stories.   Aptly called “Museum of Broken Relationships,” the traveling collection opened in 2010 when artists Dražen Grubišić and Olinka Vištica —who broke up in 2006 — found their “common assets” and “beloved belongings" were difficult to divide.   The collection, which began with the ex-couple and their friends, has since grown through anonymous donations from people who needed to let go of items that reminded them of failed romances, divorces, and flings. Pinoys in Croatia may visit the museum, housed in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.   According to an article posted on Huffington Post on Monday, the museum now has some 1,000 materials in it. Since it opened two years ago, the exhibition has traveled to different countries, including the Philippines, where it was staged in 2009. Heartbroken spectators were also welcome to donate their own “materials” in each stop.   ‘Relics’   One of the items is a sealed bottle of champagne donated by a Turkish woman. The New York Times said: “she thought [it] would be popped on the first anniversary of her new relationship, when she expected her boyfriend to propose.”    “Instead he walked away. The bottle is still full,” it added.   An ax from a woman in Berlin, dated 1995, is also on showcase. It was used “to smash every piece of furniture her girlfriend had left behind,” the Huffington Post said.   The description posted on the museum’s website said the ex “was the first woman that I let move in with me.” After the woman who donated the “Ex Axe” went on a three-week vacation to the United States, her partner told her, “I fell in love with someone else,” then “went on holiday with her new girlfriend while her furniture stayed” in the apartment.    “Not knowing what to do with my anger, I finally bought this axe at Karstadt to blow off steam and to give her at least a small feeling of loss—which she obviously did not have after our break-up,” the woman who donated the ax wrote. “In the 14 days on her holiday, every day I axed one piece of her furniture.”   Another item is a white halter wedding dress, also from Berlin, which was worn when the woman married her estranged husband in a much-talked-about wedding in Greece 18 years ago.    Things went sour as their plans to have a baby went on the drain, said the woman who donated her dress.   “Impatience tipped the scales and brought a dark gray sky over our initial happiness, built a thick while wall between our fields of vision that stifled each feeling in its embryo,” she wrote. “On the other hand, some things became clear on his side that moved me to separate.”   ‘Universal’   Last year, the Museum of Broken Relationships won the Kenneth Hudson Award at the European Museum of the Year awarding ceremony held in Germany for encouraging “discussion and reflection not only on the fragility of human relationships but also on the political, social and cultural circumstances surrounding the stories being told.”   However, for Grubišić, the collection’s real appeal comes from the fact that everyone can relate because the exhibit “shows there’s something universal: We all have been brokenhearted at least once.”   “We might say it’s a love museum, just upside down,” he said, adding that on Valentine’s Day, the establishment gets double its usual visits.   “Maybe sometime in your life you will want to remember some of the good parts of the relationship,” Grubišić added. “[Through donating], they can move on.” - VVP, GMA News